“Ask your doctor if you’ll be able to play the piano after. After everything. After it’s all finished and there’s nothing left. Will you be able to play the piano then? Ask your doctor that.”

“Sorry,” the doctor said. She was hovering over Jackie again. “We’re not sure how to turn that off.”

She waved vaguely at everything in the room, including Jackie.

“You’ll have some trouble for a while,” she said. “It will be difficult. You might notice some problems with walking and with life in general. You should look at the sky and scream about how empty it is at least twice a day.”

“What kind of accident?” said Jackie.

The doctor smiled.“The accidental kind,” she whispered. She was gone again.

“There was a slip of paper in my hand. Where is it?” Jackie asked the empty room. “I can’t feel it. I can’t feel it in the cast.”

The nurse came bustling in. She was the kind of person to bustle.

“Did you find a slip of paper in my hand?” Jackie said.

“Do not fret for a sec,” she chirped. “Before we put the cast on, I set that paper safe and sound in this box here.”

Jackie used whatever energy she had to sit up. Her face was warm. The nurse felt around in the box, frowning. Then she held it upside down. She smiled at Jackie.

“Looks like it’s gone. Sorry, dear. You look sad. Was it important?”

Jackie felt the blood leave her face. She couldn’t feel the paper in her hand, but she knew.

The nurse shrugged and then zipped out the door (she was the kind of person to zip, too).

Jackie moved her fingers inside the cast. Her fingers hurt so bad. It served them right for going numb and making her hope that the paper was finally gone.

Various machines beeped. None of them seemed to be attached to her. There was a gurgle from the loudspeaker.

“Ask your doctor a direct question with an unambiguous answer. Try to get your doctor to commit to something for once in her life.

“Ask your doctor a rhetorical question and spread your hands out despairingly. Put your doctor in a position where he feels he can’t help you even if he can.”

Jackie was alone.

The doctor was standing beside her.

“You’ll be fine. I think,” the doctor said. “I don’t know you, though. Maybe you’ll make a lot of mistakes and end up horribly unhappy. But the injuries will go away eventually. That’s the good news. There is also bad news.”

Jackie was alone again.

The voice from the loudspeaker came out as a whisper.

“Ask your doctor why. Say it like that: ‘Why?’ See if you can find out for us, okay? See if you can find out why.”

The machines beeped. Jackie closed her eyes and returned to the relative normalcy of dreams.

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